Dawn of the Airborne Laser

Yonzie writes "As you may have heard, there are a number of competing franchises working on a functional laser weapon. Popular Science has an interesting story about `The Wall of Fire', an airborne laser designed to fit in the belly of a 747. Apparently, this is powerful and precise enough to destroy enemy intercontinental and intermediate-range missiles in mid-flight. I can imagine the use of laser turrets as protection against missiles, but I really can't see the use of a laser mounted in a 747. IMHO, it's way too slow compared to the missiles, and will not be able to scramble fast enough." This is the big daddy of the JSF laser that we've mentioned before.

Comments

Obligatory Austin Powers quote

[Soulfader]

Dr. Evil: "Relase the sharks! Mr. Powers, you'll notice that all the sharks have laser beams attached to their heads. I figure every creature deserves a warm meal.."

Number 2: "*ahem* Dr. Evil, it's about the sharks. When you froze them, they were put on the endangered species list. We tried to get some, but it would have taken months to clear up the red tape."

Dr. Evil: "You know, I have one simple request - and that is, to have sharks with frikkin' laser beams attached to their heads! Now evidently my cycloptic collegue informs me that that can't be done. Can you remind me what I pay you people for? Honestly, throw me a bone here. What do we have?

Number 2: "Sea Bass"

Dr. Evil: "Riiiiiight..."

Number 2: "They are mutated sea bass."

Dr. Evil: "Really? Are they ill-tempered?"

Number 2: "Absolutely."

Dr. Evil: "That's a start."

Not sure there's any scrambling involved...

[kendoka]

Hmm, I believe these are the kinds of missions where they make sure n number of planes are always in the air. Sounds really expensive in terms of fuel, but I've heard of several occasions where they do this kind of thing...

Size..

[_ph1ux_]

I know that the thing is currently a big ass laser - but eventually we will be able to get something like this down to a reasonable size - where it can hopefully be built into attack aircraft - which at that point will allow a plane to fly with confidence in enemy territory.

The other aspect that makes this an interesting weapon to have on a 747 - let the 747 fly into enemy territory with an escort fighter squadron - the fighters protect the 747 - which protects the fighters and maybe bombers from enemy missles.

This would be a great thing to have in Command and Conquer: generals...

Although I wonder about the speed it can defend itself - what happens if you shoot ten missles at it?

Re:Size..

[Reality Master 101]

Guess what...war begets war. Weapons beget weapons.

Uh, no. War begats peace. Overwhelming weapons begats non-proliferation.

Why do you think the world has as much peace as it has? It's the called the US Military. The bigger the imbalance of power between the US and the rest of the world, the less the rogue nations will be tempted to invade their neighbors. Unfortunately, expansionism is alive and well in the middle east.

Someday all the countries of the world will be stable democracies, but that day is not today.

Re:Size..

[Wyatt Earp]

How many times has war broken out in Western Europe since the advent and proliferation of jet aircraft, missiles, nuclear weapons and ICBMs?

Since the massive armament of Israel and Egypt following the 1973 war, how many times have they fought? How many times did they fight before the US armed the crap out of both of them?

How many times since the United Kingdom and Russia got nukes and horribly dangerous arms have they fought over Central Asia? How many times before 1914 did the Russians and United Kingdom squable over Central Asia?

How many times since France got nuclear weapons have the Germans invaded them? How many times before that did the Germans invade them?

Since the United States and the Soviet Union got nuclear weapons how many citizens of either country have died from the use of those weapons in a war?

The United States and Soviet Union along with Egypt and Isreal since 1973 have illustrated that having the ability to destroy your enemy along with leaders that care for thier people and thier nation makes for a more stable and lasting peace than disarming or waging a defensive strategy.

Re:Size..

[ccmay]

War is not cool. Killing people is not cool. Wake up.

No, you wake up.

War is bad but there are plenty of things that are worse. Ask any survivor of the concentration camps who was liberated by the Allied Expeditionary Force whether they think war is 'cool.'

Pacifism can be more evil than killing people in some circumstances.

-ccm

Re:Size..

[Reality Master 101]

The last war on Iraq did not bring peace.

On the contrary, it brought a lot of peace ... to Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, who was next.

Millions more people have died as a direct result of that war because of the sanctions imposed on Iraq.

*cough* Are there actually people who believe Hussein's propaganda? "Millions" (not that many, but let's pretend) have died because of SADDAM HUSSEIN. They have plenty of money, and plenty of food. Hussein intentionally starves his people so that he can feed his military machine.

Re:Size..

[Reality Master 101]

War begats peace. [...] Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

I should just ignore something this absurd, but... it's kind of frightening that someone moderated it up.

The word "is" in this context means equivalence. "Freedom is equivalent to slavery" is a contradiction, as is "ignorance is equivalent to strength".

You'll note that nowhere did I claim that "war is equivalent to peace", and in fact, the whole concept has nothing to do with the subject at hand.

The word "beget" means "leads to". Too many people have no concept of what "peace" really means. Stop and think about it for a second... WAY too many people think that "being in favor of peace" is some noble position to take. It never occurs to them that EVERYONE IS IN FAVOR OF PEACE. DUH!

It takes no courage to advocate peace, because there is no one who doesn't advocate peace. Everyone's goal is peace; the only question is how to achieve peace.

You cannot achieve peace by appeasing military dictators with expansionist goals. It's worth pointing out that the same debates took place in the 1930s during Hitler's rise. Imagine if the world had had the guts to stand up to Hitler at the time. Everyone knew he was dangerous, but everyone wanted "peace at any cost". And that lead to millions upon millions of deaths.

The peaceniks seem to think that if we just disbanded the US military then suddenly the world would join hands and weep with joy at world peace suddenly attained.

Kent, this is God.....

[hudsonhawk]

Yes, it looks really ingenious and all, but can I pop popcorn with it from a range of three miles? Hilarity would be bound to ensue!

More Pretty Pictures

[Pooua]

"The ABL weapon system consists of a high-energy, chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL) mounted on a modified 747-400F (freighter) aircraft to shoot down theater ballistic missiles in their boost phase. A crew of four, including pilot and copilot, would be required to operate the airborne laser, which would patrol in pairs at high altitude, about 40,000 feet, flying in orbits over friendly territory, scanning the horizon for the plumes of rising missiles. Capable of autonomous operation, the ABL would acquire and track missiles in the boost phase of flight, illuminating the missile with a tracking laser beam while computers measure the distance and calculate its course and direction. After acquiring and locking onto the target, a second laser - with weapons-class strength - would fire a three- to five-second burst from a turret located in the 747's nose, destroying the missiles over the launch area."

FAS: Airborne Laser

"Lockheed Martin Space Systems, a member of Team Airborne Laser (ABL), has begun fabrication of the revolutionary, high-energy laser weapon system's turret assembly at its Sunnyvale, Calif., facility.

"The turret assembly, located on the nose of the system's modified 747-400 Freighter aircraft, houses a rotating 1.5-meter telescope designed to locate hostile missiles while in their boost phase."

SpaceDaily: LockMart Begins Building Airborne Laser Turret

Re:More Pretty Pictures

[Sarcazmo]

, scanning the horizon for the plumes of rising missiles. Capable of autonomous operation.....

I can see it now in John Carmack's blog:

Attempted our first high altitude launch today. Everything was going fine, but then there was this bright purple flash and the rocket just exploded. Suspect the jumper cables we used to connect the battery to the control computer. More details once we look at the flight data we got.

yeah, but you got to hit the missles early

[EccentricAnomaly]

I saw a presentation when I was in grad school on the previous incarnation of the 747-laser. The big problem was the laser could only blow up the missle if its tanks were mostly full of fuel.

This is because missle fuel tanks are under high pressure so that the fuel can help form part of the structure for the missle to support the weight of the fuel. If a laser can weaken the walls of the fuel tank then the missle's structure will fail, and the missle will break up.

Anyway these lasers have to hit a missle right after it launches or else the tanks have lost too much pressure and the laser won't do any damage... the presenter defended this by saying you want to shoot down a missle close to launch anyway because you don't want the debris from the missle falling on any friendlies... and this is a good argument (the scuds shot down by patriots in gulf war I caused a lot of damage when they fell out of the sky).

I do have to wonder, though, if the missle launches can be detected and the missle targeted quickly enough for these lasers to work... and what about missles with solid rocket motors? I doubt the laser would be any good against these at all.

Re:yeah, but you got to hit the missles early

[ScottKin]

Heat *is* heat - and when you apply the ammount of heat generated by the ABL System to a Solid fuel, it's going to create quite a big "boom".

Most model rockets today are powered by solid-fuel engines, and if you expose them to heat they'll do wonderfully-interesting things.

ScottKin

Re:yeah, but you got to hit the missles early

[ggwood]

Likely you would want to strike the missle early to minimize the spread of whatever nasty stuff it is carrying. I heard reports that shooting the SCUD's down over Israel caused more damage than the SCUDS's would have caused if they struck ground. I'm unsure of the validity of this argument. However if we expand our view to nuclear weapons, *any* detonation would be horrible. Better, perhaps, to keep it nearby whatever country launched it. Or with some planning to spread it out over some uninhabited locale.

I know what we should call this...

[edashofy]

I think we should call the first 747 with a mounted laser off the line "TROGDOR THE BURNINATOR!"

Re:Still a bad idea though.

[DoubleD]

Huh? Did you read the article? Silly question. How in the name of common sense did you come to the conclusion this is a destabilizing weapon? This has much less to do with ICBM (usually Nuclear) than with shooting down short range tactical missle (possibly equiped with nuclear/chem/bio payloads).

The Gulf War featured numerous Scud missles launched by Iraq with no more than a general "gee I hope it hits my enemy not my friend".

In short this would be a normal battlefield weapon used to increase the effectiveness of our military and reduce friendly or innocent casualties. It "destabilizes" no more or less than the USA developing a better gun or fighter.

Re:Star wars!

[MightyTribble]

My only hope is that the laser will be powerful enough to go through dense fog and also not be affected by rain/moisture as well.

It will fly above the clouds. No fog or rain at 40,000 feet. It will also target missiles that have cleared the cloudbank, while they are still on ascent.

Cute, but not very effective

[slouie]

Cute idea, but it assumes a lot. Off the top of my head....

1) Clear flyable weather. While you can detect the thermal blooms of launch, you can't rely on that for tracking, thus the need for a ranging laser. Will this work if you've got 5-10k ft of cloud cover to visually confirm the target? How about minor-major turbulance?

2) Total aerial supremancy. As with AWACS, you'll need to dominate the skies to the point where SAMs are not making the plane suddenly jink and miss the shot at the wrong time.

3) Target overload. If there are a "lot" of thermal blooms, how long will it take to determine which one is shooting the real missle? Which is just an fire/explosion on the ground? Recall that Iraq is tasked with destroying 100+ short-range ballistic missles. How do you tell a 200km range missle with a nuke vs. a 50km one with conventional explosives. You have 20 shots to figure it out.

4) Equipment. How long to reload between shots? Fast enough to take a second shot? What sort of stress does this put on the plane and the internal equipment? If you do miss, can you still track the missed target?

5) Limited range. From the description it can cover a few hundred square miles. Say 400 square miles or an area of 20 miles by 20 miles. Expand that by constantly flying large fig-8s and you got maybe an area of 3000 sq. miles covered for about five minutes every hour. Lots of luck tracking down the right five minutes of launch...

If this was fully operational during the 1991 Gulf War, it might have saved a few lives and eased the stress level in Israel and Saudia Arabia, but I doubt it would have gotten more than one or two missles. And this works only on that level. A battlefield defense versus an enemy with some ballistic capability, without significant air support, and limited firing capabilities.

It is a big step forwards though. I'll give them a few years to see if they can miniturize to limited fighter usage. Now THAT would be worthwhile.

Re:Cute, but not very effective

[TWagers]

1) Clear flyable weather. While you can detect the thermal blooms of launch, you can't rely on that for tracking, thus the need for a ranging laser. Will this work if you've got 5-10k ft of cloud cover to visually confirm the target? How about minor-major turbulance?

The system uses 2 tracking lasers to compensate for up to 500 miles of atmospheric distortion, and since the platform will be flying at 40,000 feet (well above 99.99% of weather systems) and it will only take seconds for an ICBM-class missle to reach that altitute, cloud cover and the minimal amout of turbulance are non-factors.

2) Total aerial supremancy. As with AWACS, you'll need to dominate the skies to the point where SAMs are not making the plane suddenly jink and miss the shot at the wrong time.

SAM's have a limited range, and if anything would be more concerned about strike fighters that are bombing them, not to mention the fact that I'm certian we'll have a sufficent number of EA-6B Prowlers in the air jamming and scrambling the SAM's to avoid long range radar-tracked launches. The ICBM's, in the case of North Korea, would need to rapidly head out over the pacific to reash the US, giving us plenty of controllable airspace to park a 747.

3) Target overload. If there are a "lot" of thermal blooms, how long will it take to determine which one is shooting the real missle? Which is just an fire/explosion on the ground? Recall that Iraq is tasked with destroying 100+ short-range ballistic missles. How do you tell a 200km range missle with a nuke vs. a 50km one with conventional explosives. You have 20 shots to figure it out.

Trajectory tells you all you need to know. A short range weapon will have a much lower track than a long range missle, which will need much higher altitude in order to reach its intended target. A basic knowledge of the opponents ballistic missle capability and a few seconds of tracking data is typically sufficent to provide a fairly accurate track and intended destination for the weapon. Additionally, stationary ground-based heat 'plumes' don't move, and would be easily detected as just that, a ground fire.

4) Equipment. How long to reload between shots? Fast enough to take a second shot? What sort of stress does this put on the plane and the internal equipment? If you do miss, can you still track the missed target?

A good question. Since the reaction that powers the laser is chemical based, it would be interesting to know what the regeneration time is. Stress on the plane should be minimal (there's no real signifigent 'moving parts' to the weapon to induce stress), and it maintains enough reactants for 20 shots.

5) Limited range. From the description it can cover a few hundred square miles. Say 400 square miles or an area of 20 miles by 20 miles. Expand that by constantly flying large fig-8s and you got maybe an area of 3000 sq. miles covered for about five minutes every hour. Lots of luck tracking down the right five minutes of launch...

Generally, if we know an opponent has intercontanental capability, we have a fairly good idea what track a missle would need to take to reach us. In the case of a massive country like the USSR, such a weapon is virtually meaningless, but in a small country like North Korea, it should be simple to cover their launch trajectory.

Re:Cute, but not very effective

[malakai]

Cute, but not very effective

Well, you say that which such authority you must have been part of the team that designed and built it.

1) Clear flyable weather. While you can detect the thermal blooms of launch, you can't rely on that for tracking, thus the need for a ranging laser. Will this work if you've got 5-10k ft of cloud cover to visually confirm the target? How about minor-major turbulance?

The system uses a deformable mirror to compensate for phase distortion that occurs naturally in the atomsphere. This was one of the biggest achievments they made back in the early 90's. The whole system has a number of controllable that allow it to adaptively compensate for not only variance but turbulence. See here: http://www.spie.org/web/oer/december/oer_dec95_1.h tml

Also, at 40k feet, this is ABOVE the cloud layer. Once you detect the heat bloom, and there will be a large heat bloom as the missles are essentially standing on pillars of fire, the system begines to prep and waits for the missle to break through the cloud layer, at which point it can target it, measure the return radition from the targeting laser, compensate for distance/atmosphere, and take a shot at it.

2) Total aerial supremancy. As with AWACS, you'll need to dominate the skies to the point where SAMs are not making the plane suddenly jink and miss the shot at the wrong time

This thing is 'parked' in a figure 8 pattern at above 40k feet. SAMs can't reach it. AWACS hangs out at above 29k because of the radar it uses and the value of said radar at 29k. And yeah, duh, you want to keep some sort of enemy fighters away from them. This is a non-issue for the US right now. We have air superiority.

3) Target overload. If there are a "lot" of thermal blooms, how long will it take to determine which one is shooting the real missle? ...

It waits for a missle to break through the cloud layer. If something busts through the cloud layer, at this time it's first come first get shot down. If 100 are launched, and there's only 2 ABL's flying around, yeah, some will get through. But i don't think the people saved from the 20 or so that get shot down are going to complain.

4) Equipment. How long to reload between shots? Fast enough to take a second shot? What sort of stress does this put on the plane and the internal equipment? If you do miss, can you still track the missed target

Military secret, but "experts" guesstimate less than a minute.

5) Limited range. From the description it can cover a few hundred square miles....

It's range is again secret but it's assumed to be "100s of kilometers". I'm not going to do the math, but covering say a circular range of 200 miles, at 40k feet gives your a ground coverage of a much larger aspect. Throwing a few of these over North Korea could neuter them on the spot.

-Malakai

Scramble? Who said anything about scrambling?

[aminorex]

It seems obvious to me that the 747s would just be
kept flying in a coverage zone. They are there for
altitude, not intercept. Since you can't use a
space-based laser by treaty, it's the best, cheapest
way to get wide coverage.

As regards speed, the laser travels at c, which
is plenty fast.